


keep on playing nice

by Chiropter



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, M/M, kuroshin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 09:56:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1262026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiropter/pseuds/Chiropter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For some reason, even though Shintaro knows Konoha is gone, he continues walking along behind him. If the world can end in a day, maybe it can perform just one more miracle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep on playing nice

**Author's Note:**

> i was prompted to write a kuroshin zombie au drabble... i generally don't like zombies, but i love post-apocalypse, so i had fun working this prompt into something i'd read myself. it does end a little weirdly, though.
> 
> warnings for cannibalism, implied nsfw, and gore.

-1-

It’s been thirteen weeks since it started raining, and nine since Konoha was bitten.

The changes were slow at first. The bleeding was easy to stop; it wasn’t what either of them had expected from video games, just a tiny bite, made by regular human teeth. It scabbed and fell off within a week, and they’d wondered if maybe, just maybe, the news had been wrong.

The news wasn’t wrong. But something else was.

“I thought you didn’t bleach your hair?”

A hand raised, a mirror shown. Shintaro can still remember Konoha’s frown as he whispered: “I don’t.”

-2-

He’d started acting up. Small things- killing moths, wasting food, laughing when they found a dead dog in the road. The rain made tear tracks down his face, into his mouth, eyes, nostrils, but he was laughing still, ever so softly. Shintaro had to grab his hand to stop himself vomiting.

He didn’t laugh when they found the boy, torn to pieces in a nearby garage, dog whistle clutched tight in a fist three metres from his head.

-3-

He laughed at the next one, though. Tiny, hiccupping giggles, hidden behind a shaking hand while tears dripped from his nose. Shintaro reached out to rub his back, and as they looked into each other’s eyes, he could have sworn that the red in Konoha’s was falling with his tears, like shedding scales.

He woke up for a drink that night, and the eyes beside his head were yellow as the sun.

-4-

“You’re a pain, Kisaragi.”

In acknowledgement, Shintaro dips his head. His eyes are storming, and the man with the snake features thinks they look beautiful. He’d like to see them bend, maybe. Collapse. Cry.

“A bore. A drag. A nuisance. If only you’d been bitten instead, no? Maybe one of you would have made it!”

Shintaro’s laugh, on the other hand, is not beautiful. It rasps and oozes- waste, fleeing a corpse.

“Man, I really didn’t think your memory could get any worse!”

The dead man tilts his head. A question. Shintaro gives him a look somewhere between disbelief and amusement.

“You  _are_  Konoha.”

Without a word, without a sound, he strides forwards and grabs Shintaro’s chin, foul breath hot on foul skin. His grip is tight, and his nails make marks like cat scratches.

They stare at each other a moment- then the dead man smiles.

“No,” he says plainly, “I really don’t think I am.”

-5-

The rain is heavy tonight, and the drumming of it could almost be knocking, somewhere above the car park they’ve settled in. These places are good shelter, but often occupied- and occupied means dangerous. Today, however, they seem to have been lucky. The place is littered with bodies, from what looks to have been some kind of mass shooting. Many of the dead have packs full of supplies. There doesn’t seem to be anyone left here, and besides. Aren’t they dangerous too, now?

Shintaro is lying on his back, and Kuroha (the name was a joke, but it stuck) is resting against him, feet in his lap. He’s cooking something, and it smells good.

“Hey. Aren’t you supposed to eat brains, now?” asks Shintaro. He doesn’t sound interested.

Kuroha shrugs, waving a lump of roasting meat in one hand, as if the heat from the fire were nothing.  

“That’d be lucky for you, since you’re so…  _lacking_  in that area.”

Shintaro snorts. Maybe he’s right. IQ tests stopped meaning anything a long time ago.

“I take it you don’t, then.”

Kuroha shrugs again, tears off a small piece. Pops it in his mouth.

“This is thigh meat.” He considers, then grins wide, teeth sticky with dried blood and charred flesh. “Want some?”

-6-

They stay underground until the bodies and the beans run out, then head out into the fields. Open farmland is better than forest; less room for traps, and it’s easy to see for miles around. Moving carefully, they can avoid pits and hidden corpses without trouble.

The problem is the cold.

It must be October by now, and the chills are setting in fast. It’s not safe to sleep outside at night at the best of times, but with the weather as it is, things seem hopeless.

“You can always cuddle up to me!” laughs Kuroha, and his eyes are icy.

His arms are even icier. The beat of his heart is thudding and low, dull-sounding through his thin clothes. Doesn’t he get cold? Why is his breath still so hot, so rotten on Shintaro’s neck?

“I could rip out your throat from here,” he growls, and Shintaro fiddles with his broken watch, wondering when he last set the time.

-7-

_His skin looks more snakelike than ever. It’s falling off, hanging loose around his ribs and pulling at his eyes, drawing madness from the whites of them. That gold doesn’t look so much like sunshine anymore._

_“You taste disgusting, NEET boy. Worse than carrion.”_

_Shintaro clings to him and tries to scratch it off, find the healthy scales beneath. All he finds is dandruff, sawdust. Dried blood on his clothing that doesn’t wash out for days._

-8-

“Even if you cry for him, he’s never coming back.”

He’s not even sure who said it, or whether it was said aloud at all. Kuroha is facing away from him, and shows no signs of being awake; he’s so still that Shintaro wonders, for a moment, if he’s gone. How would he feel about that, he wonders? Dying alone in an abandoned greenhouse sounds rather pleasant.

A pair of gardening shears rusts on the building’s single table. The shadow it casts passes over his face, inch by inch, as the light crawls into the sky. He buries his face in his sleeping bag.

_Even if you cry for him, he’s never coming back._

-9-

“I could be just like him, you know.”

Shintaro grimaces. Not this again.

“I could bleach my hair,” he continues, “ _feed up_.” The smirk on his face makes Shintaro want to punch him, but last time he tried he lost a tooth. Kuroha is wearing it on a string round his neck.

So, instead, he beams at him.

“You know I like you as you are.”


End file.
